The current “acting” head of the FAA is, in fact, highly qualified. The Senate has not, however, approved the individual who was nominated to head the FAA. After his nomination, he was alleged to have been involved in a contracting scandal in Los Angeles and the Senate has parked the nomination for 10 months.
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz criticized the FAA’s management of the system and called for an explanation of issues.
“The flying public deserves safety in the sky,” Cruz said in a statement. “The FAA’s inability to keep an important safety system up and running is completely unacceptable and just the latest example of dysfunction within the Department of Transportation. The administration needs to explain to Congress what happened, and Congress should enact reforms in this year’s FAA reauthorization legislation. This incident also highlights why the public needs a competent, proven leader with substantive aviation experience leading the FAA.”
Source: Software maintenance mistake at center of major FAA computer meltdown: Official
The Acting head of the FAA has a very impressive background, having been an American Airlines pilot on 767, 757, and MD-80 aircraft, and an executive at both Quantas (Australia) and WestJet (Canada).
The NOTAMS outage appears to have been a systemic information systems failure in using inappropriate and defective procedures for system backup of a safety critical system. Am looking forward to learning more about how this failure occurred in the organization.
Note – The FAA has long had a difficult time implementing information systems. This goes, way, way, way back. As a senior in college, back before the Wright Brothers had taken flight (hah hah), I wrote a senior thesis on the use of automation by the FAA. For that paper, I visited numerous FAA facilities and combed through a lot of published literature. The bottom line, then, was the FAA was always a re-active organization, and its implementation of technology solutions was expensive and took years longer than anticipated. The result was the agency long relied on much older, out of date tech – for many, many years While I made my career in tech and the software industry, I am co-author of one patent on an aviation safety device and I have a currently inactive private pilot’s license. I am now studying to take the Part 107 Remote Pilot exam.
